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Email letters, June 9, 2011

In a June 8 letter to the editor from Robert A. Tallarico entitled “Sentinel should get its bird facts straight,” Tallarico takes The Daily Sentinel to task for “not enlightening us with information to enhance your pictures does us a disservice by leaving us in ignorance.” Tallarico states that the “small bird” pictured in the June 2 edition of the Sentinel entitled “No towel necessary” is a Western Towhee.

While I am no bird expert, I do love watching birds and occasionally even take the time to research the identity of the birds I am viewing. I believe that the bird pictured is a Western Tanager, not a Western Towhee. Is it better to provide the beautiful picture with no indentifying information, asthe Sentinel has done, or to provide misinformation as Mr. Tallarico has done?

JOYCE GIBBS
Grand Junction

Denialists disregard scientific consensus

The history of the American West could be written from the perspective of rivers, aquifers and wells, for water shortages have triggered innumerable social upheavals and economic disruptions over the past few centuries. To willfully ignore scientific warnings of scientists about climate change’s impact on the Colorado River is to face grave dangers unprepared. And yet many members of our political and media systems are doing just that. By embracing spurious conspiracy theories (Light-Bulb Police! Compulsory Bike Paths!) while rejecting the carefully prepared evidence of experts, climate denialists set the stage for global disasters of terrifying proportions.

Climatologists’ predictions have been coming true with alarming regularity over the past several decades. Their principal errors are invariably those of underestimating the magnitude of the problem. Climate denialists’ disregard of the overwhelming scientific consensus is as socially irresponsible as a drunk fratboy’s attempt to run Class Six rapids in an inner tube.

Janet Johnson and Karen Sjoberg’s letter stating that solar and wind energy is cheaper is bull. Solar is about 800 percent more expensive and wind is 200 percent more expensive that coal, oil or uranium energy.

They may be cleaner and somewhat safer, but if one furnished this country’s energy needs with wind turbines, there would not be a square foot of ground without a wind generator and animal rights gurus would come unglued with all the dead birds. Solar is great, if anyone could afford it other than the government. We have to go to nuclear at some point and might as well furnish our own uranium.
R.M. SHERMAN
Grand Junction